


To Wash Your Name Away With Blood

by elluvias



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Self Harm, Soul Bond, This is very dark, Triggery, like seriously guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:14:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elluvias/pseuds/elluvias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo Baggins can no longer carry Thorin's name.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>trigger warning: self harm</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Wash Your Name Away With Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This will likely just be a painful standalone oneshot

There are bruises in the shape of a hand on his neck. The finger marks stand out boldly against his pale skin, and even the rings that Thorin wore were distinguishable even in the dim evening light. It was hard to breathe and a healer said his windpipe was bruised though mercifully not crushed. How not having his windpipe being crushed is seen as a mercy in this moment and not the curse it is baffled and confused the hobbit.

His eyes were blank and his mind numbed to the chaos swirling about him. Battle was to be waged tomorrow, there would be death and blood and gore despite what Bilbo had sacrificed to try and stop it. Bilbo could not influence orcs afterall. He could not stop them from marching upon Erebor. Though part of his shattered heart wished he could, how he wished he could stop the inevitable pain.

But there is something more important he had to do at the moment.

The knife he holds is of dwarvish make, a knife that Thorin had given to him on the third day of their stay at Laketown. Bilbo had been utterly miserable then, sicker than he’d ever been in his life with a horrible cough that left him retching more often than not from the sheer force of it. Thorin had come during the midst of fever dreams and sluggish waking hours to carefully place the knife by Bilbo’s bedside. The king had lingered, wiping the sweaty curls from Bilbo’s brow and gazing at him tenderly. It had been the first gesture to show Thorin’s acceptance of Bilbo’s soul bond. The second had been the mithril shirt.

The soul bond was broken now. It had splintered and cracked, groaning under the weight of Thorin’s madness, and shattering under the weight of Bilbo’s betrayal. There was only one thing left to do now.

Bilbo had had the mark on his wrist from the moment he had been born. The stark angular dwarvish runes standing out against his skin like a brand, the words indecipherable to all other hobbits. Well unless you were Bilbo Baggins. He had been able to look at the letters spelling a word he could not pronounce but knew their meaning well enough. _Love, Acceptance, Devotion, Trust_. That was what they had meant to the hobbit his entire life, but now all they were was a reminder of his failure.

Someone might have tried to convince him that he hadn’t failed persay as much as it just hadn’t worked out well in his favor. Bilbo, to those particular people, would have glared at them and ignored their blatant idiocy. He had failed. He had not been enough for Thorin to keep his mind, he had not been enough to turn Thorin’s thoughts from war, and he had been so much less than he could have been when he broke the final shimmering thread that held them together. There had been a chance, somewhere, one he hadn’t been able to see to make peace, to keep peace, to keep everything from going so terribly wrong.

He did not deserve the one whose name had been penned onto his skin by a divine hand at his soul’s conception. He did not deserve to keep that name, because he had betrayed them.

With a soft whisper of an apology to the Valar, for ruining his chance, for throwing the gift of Thorin Oakenshield’s heart away Bilbo began his duty. Hobbits didn’t like pain. Very few creatures did, but hobbits moreso than others went out of their way to avoid it. Yet now all Bilbo was was pain. It would not stop, it would never stop. This would not make it better, but duties were duties for a reason, especially the ones often viewed as distasteful.

Pressing the knife to his skin he began to cut. Small slender lines of blood bloomed across his skin as he methodically set his mind to work. The dark blue lines were carefully becoming ruined, their meaning slowly erased under the well of blood that began to fall from Bilbo’s wrist and onto the grassy floor of his tent. Bilbo Baggins could hold no claim to Thorin Oakenshield any longer.


End file.
